Since it's founding in 1997, the CYC-Net discussion group has been asked thousands of questions. These questions often generate many replies from people in all spheres of the Child and Youth Care profession and contain personal experiences, viewpoints, as well as recommended resources.
Below are some of the threads of discussions on varying Child and Youth Care related topics.
Questions and Responses have been reproduced verbatim.
Listen to thisHello Friends,
I am working on a specific project and am looking for a few good articles on
‘developing a residential treatment program’ for troubled youth. And I
am not having much luck locating any.
So ...I was wondering if any of you know of a good one – something that
talks about what needs to happen in the process in order to develop an
effective program.
And, thinking that there likely is no such animal, I would appreciate any
thoughts you have yourself about what it takes to develop, and maintain,
effective residential treatment.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thom
...
Hi Thom,
I have a number of wonderful papers, articles and books on the subject and
will compile a list for you. However can I suggest a rather unusual source
for you. Right at the beginning of my career I saw the film The Quiet One
[Concord Films]. It inspired me then and it inspires me now. I have set up
many residential homes over the years and that film, more than anything
else, has informed my choices and conditioned my hopes and preserved my
faith in the healing potential of residential care. It was made in 1948 in
black and white which is now very shaky but the soundtrack is pure poetry.
It is available from the net by free download and I do urge you to have a
look.
Yours,
David Pithers
...
Hi Thom
Not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for but we did a series of
articles on foundational principles and practices for shelter care that
might be useful. Some of it may be a bit dated but it reflects our
experience and thinking at the time:
Scribner, E., Gerber, K., Skott-Myhre, H.A. (1998). Curious
conversations: The wonder of youth work. New Designs for Youth Development.
Winter..
Reed, C., Skott-Myhre, H.A., Wade, K. (1995) We mean to do this: An
experiment in post-modern youth work. New Designs for Youth Development.
Fall..
Skott-Myhre, H.A. (1994). A post-modern approach in runaway shelters
for adolescents. New Designs for Youth Development. Vol. 11 No. 2, Fall..
Skott-Myhre, H.A. (1994). Discovering competence; A coevolutionary
model for human services. New Designs for Youth Development.Vol. 11 No. 1.
January.
Hans Skott-Myhre
Brock University
...
Thom,
I have just the link for you. The article is in a recent Relational
Child and Youth Work journal and titled, "Jen's Place". The full
article is available as a link on our Website
www.jens-place.org. (It is the 6th
bullet on the "who we are" page.) It gives the overview you identified
wanting to find. It focuses on the development of the effective residential
program targeting youth. We will have to now work on the article re
maintaining the program.
On maintaining ideas that immediately pop to mind are the need for qualified
staffing working in a program that supports them via schedules that work and
salaries that represent the professional staffing, thus allowing for reduced
turn over and consistency in care. Developing a program that allows for and
continues to change with the youth currently in it and finds them always a
partner in there treatment goals and plans.
I will take some time to further reflect on this, I hope the article is
helpful in what you are looking for.
Take Care,
Jenn Dyment
...
I would suggest that you get in touch with Emmanuel Grupper, at Youth Aliyah
-- emang,netvision.net.il and ask for suggestions. Youth Aliyah,
which began as an immigrant absorption agency, now provides residential care
for several types of out-of-home children.
David Macarov
...
Hi Thom,
I would (modestly) suggest that the framework outlined in the results of my
grounded theory research on group homes (Pain, Normality and the
Struggle for Congruence: Reinterpreting Residential Care for Children and
Youth, Haworth, 2002) offers at least a good starting point for
understanding core elements and dynamics of an effective residential
treatment program.
If you have read it, and disagree, I would be interested in your comments on
how it may fall short in suggesting "what needs to happen in the process in
order to develop an effective program". Just for your information, to date,
four states in Australia have been using the framework for re-designing
residential care across the states, and the Residential Child Care Project
at Cornell University has revised its training curriculum for residential
workers using this framework as a way of integrating their knowledge and
skills into a coherent whole.
As ever, best regards,
Jim
James P. Anglin
...
Hi Thom
Here is some of my thoughts.
To add to your project I want to mention a report – if you have not already
heard of it as you probably have everything on residential care.
The report is called Reclaiming Residential Care: A Positive Choice for
Children and Young People in Care.
It was funded by The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust of Australia and
written by Lisa Hillan a 2005 Churchill Fellow. Lisa explored different
models and outcomes of residential care with an examination of the links to
evidence and research in the design and evaluation of residential care. She
includes a bibliography. She also visited many residential facilities in
Scotland, England, Vancouver, Chicago and New York.
I have had the opportunity to establish a couple residential programs and
have learned that one of the first steps is the standards as established by
the municipal, provincial and federal governments. For example, fire and
health regulations, location, sleeping accomodations, record keeping,
medications and so on.
Training of staff and dealing with writing matters. How many times have we
heard that we spend more time writing reports than in working with the
youth. There is report writing, logs, plans of care, assessments, progress
reports, serious occurrence reports, consent forms and so on.
However, I find this nothing as compared to the actual establishment of a
residential service that provides the best care we can for the children and
youth we care for.
I appreciate you wanting to maintain effective residential treatment. My
personal view is that the key to this is staff. It truly bothers me when I
hear of the many facilities where the staff turnover is higher than the
youth in the program. We encourage youth to "trust" us and then staff
turnover is much too high. We must give residential staff what we expect
them to give to the youth in care. Respect, good supports (financial and
benefits) and to listen to them.
Thom, thank you for giving me this opportunity to provide some feedback and
I wish you all the luck in your endeavour.
Sheldon Reinsilber
...
Hey Thom:
I wrote a piece called "Ten Principles of Residential Care" that is
available in the latest issue of the Scottish Journal of Residential
Care. It covers my thoughts on the issue of maintaining (but not on
setting up) an effective residential care/treatment environment. Also,
I would recommend you read the first installment of the Harry Potter series
(I am quite serious) andpay special attention to the organizational make up
ofthe principal setting; it's not really treatment-oriented, but a
brilliant basis for any out of home life space environment.
Kiaras
...
http://www.archive.org/details/the_quiet_one
is the link for the film "The Quiet One" to which David Pithers referred.
Alfonso Ramirez, Jr.
...
Hi Thom -
I teach a course developed by the National Resource Center for Youth
Services entitled "Residential Child and Youth Care Professional Curriculum"
and I think it's great. It includes four modules:
1. Creating a culture of care
2. Overview of child development
3. Building relationships
4. Teaching discipline.
It is very interactive and, dare I say, fun!
You can find out more about it here:
http://www.nrcys.ou.edu/training/tot/tot_rcycp.shtml
Emily
Chicago, IL
...
Hey Thom,
Hope you're well. If I were gonna suggest a couple of things, I'd say most
importantly, from the beginning I'd implement a daily non-directive group
session that would serve as a place where workers and residence have an
opportunity to process what happens in the milieu, and learn to draw close
to each other. I would place it in the morning, right after hygiene, and
meals to convey the message that after basic needs are met, being together
and growing together is the priority. If theteam is multidisciplinary, and
there are traditional roles like, "therapists" & "frontline", both should be
present in the group. Secondly I would strongly suggest those doing the
"frontline" be diploma/degree holding members of their professional
association. I could go on, but have to get back to work.
Thanks,
Mike Wattie, CYC, cert.
...
Hi Thom,
Treatment foster care in Cobourg is just starting up a Mixed Modality
program and have done some research into what good treatment is.
They have also been successful in promoting a Treatment
foster care network and are part of a study regarding the center of
excellence for child welfare. Nitza Perlman was the woman conducting
this you can google her for information. Duane Durham is the contact
at Treatment foster care his e-mail is
duane.durham@treatmentfostercare.ca.
I work with long term care children and youth at Durham Children's Aid
Society. I also worked in residence prior to this and in between at a
school program and at Big Sister's. When working on the floor we had
the best shifts when we had the youth involved in doing things, sports,
activities, group discussions that weren't prolonged and were meaningful. We
had a team of individuals who were young all educated with three year
diploma's from a college and varying degrees of experience.
From the side of a child welfare worker the best treatment facilities are
those that stick with difficult youth even when they are "difficult", some
treatment centers are better at managing difficult behaviour than other's
and many give up, just as the youth are becoming comfortable. I have
had placements where children / youth constantly AWOL and the staff take
them back, make them comfortable, process long and short term goals with
them, let the youth know they have a place to come back to and try and give
them a skill set so they can keep themselves safe when on the street, and
then there are other programs where if youth AWOL they give notice.
(Our agency will also give notice if youth are gone more than 2 weeks,
financial constraints). It seems to me that the agencies that are
willing to stick with children through thick and thin, have some sort of
school program and lots of programming are most successful.
Programming as in sports, or some interest unique to the child, realizing
that most of the "treatment" occurs in the milieu.
I hope that is helpful to you.
...
I also downloaded and watched the movie "The Quiet One" – really great, I will be showing it to all our staff. (http://www.archive.org/details/the_quiet_one)
Thanks.
Werner van der Westhuizen
Port Elizabeth, South Africa
...
Hi Thom.
I use the book Healing Spaces by Michael Burns in my course Child
and Youth Care Practice when discussing residential programs. I find it
captures all the essential ingredients of the therapeutic milieu very well.
There are checklists for review or assessments of programs included.
Reclaiming youth at risk, and the Circle of Courage book/staff development
video accompaniment also guide staff reflection on whether the elements of
the Circle are reflected in programming.
Dawne MacKay-Chiddenton
...
Thom
I teach a course Groups in Context which tries to teach CYW's how to manage
groups and build positive groups
Believe it or not I was forced to use the old The Other 24 Hours
but it was too dated and wordy so I'm now in the same boat.
There's great stuff on classroom management which is relevant. Glasser's
Schools without Failure is good. I use parts of that. Found one
specific to Foster Care but we need a new CYW "bible" to teach the
importance of routines rules and structure as well as group dynamics and
predicting and preventing group catastrophies.
Good luck,
Respond if you have questions.. I have been struggling with this for a few
years
Peter Hoag
